300: Rise of an Empire (15) **

Pecs flex, torsos ripple and bearded men growl, but it’s a woman scorned who spills the most blood in Noam Munro’s turgid sequel (of sorts) to the 2007 swords and sandals epic.

Based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel Xerxes, 300: Rise Of An Empire unfolds before, during and after the fierce Battle of Thermopylae chronicled in the first film.

300: Rise of an Empire

Zack Snyder, who helmed the original and has since made Watchmen and Man Of Steel, defers the director’s throne to Noam Munro. He continues the heavily stylised, slow-motion slaughter and eye-popping production design.

Once again, colours are saturated and the contrast between light and dark intensified, although jettisons of blood have lost their rich scarlet hue in the sequel, presumably to guarantee a 15 certificate given the profusion of decapitations and dismemberments.

Carnage is unrelenting, as are the legions of swaggering beefcakes with impressive sweat-glistened six-packs.

Spartan Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) is both protagonist and narrator, succinctly summing up events at Marathon where courageous Greek general Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) fires the arrow that slays Persian King Darius (Igal Naor) in front of his son, Prince Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro).

‘It was Darius’s son Xerxes’s eyes that had the stink of destiny about them,’ remarks Gorgo, exemplifying the overblown floweriness of the script.

Darius’s adopted daughter Artemesia (Eva Green), who was raped and discarded by Greek soldiers, pledges to avenge the king.

She masterfully manipulates Xerxes in his hour of grief, transforming the weak-willed mortal into a strutting God-King, then leads the Persians into battle on the high seas while Xerxes overcomes King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) at Thermopylae.

All that stands between Artemesia’s vast armada is a few hundred boats under the command of Themistokles, flanked by close friend Aeskylos (Hans Matheson), brave warrior Scyllias (Callan Murphy) and his son Calisto (Jack O’Connell).

300: Rise Of An Empire intercuts footage from the superior first film with the breathtaking action at sea. Clashes between the Greek and Persian ships are choreographed with aplomb and the 3D format comes into its own as hulls smash through the bellies of enemy ships.

But Stapleton fails to fill Butler’s huge sandals. He has neither the imposing physical presence nor the deep growl of his predecessor so when Themistokles delivers a rousing call to arms - ‘Let it be shown that we chose to live on our feet rather than die on our knees!’ - our blood isn’t even slightly stirred.

Green is more convincing as a vengeful harpie, who gleefully cuts off the head of an underperforming subordinate then steals a final kiss before tossing the dripping noggin at the camera.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Hayling Islander provides news, events and sport features from the Hayling area. For the best up to date information relating to Hayling and the surrounding areas visit us at Hayling Islander regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Hayling Islander requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.